Ms. Bio's "Corrodo" (Corrado)

[Bio]

The missus (though we aren't married we have been together for 10 years hence the Ms.) said I should start a project log for her 1992 2.0 16V Corrado.
It's been lovingly nicknamed the "Corrodo" because old VDubs are a bit of a sure thing for rust.

We've had the car about 4-5 years now and was originally bought as a bit of a project when she got her company car.
We paid way too much for it (I have a bad habit of doing that) and it wasn't in great condition but it was <100k on the clock and we chopped her old Astra in for it.
As she used to have an old 80's XR2 in the same colour, she was suckered in by the similar shapes, the colour, everything. It was a purchase made with the heart and not with the head. Had we made it sensibly, we wouldn't have it for sure.

The first year or so was fine, we didn't drive it much, a couple of issues here and there as expected with old cars, but nothing major. We moved out of her parents place into our own and let it sit for about 6 months.
Got it back on the road, the break callipers ceased on.
Had them replaced, I drove it to work one day, then on the way back scraped the rear arch on the pillar of our drive way at the time. To my horror it was pretty much all filler.
We subsequently MOT'd it anyway and received some corrosion warnings and a note of "filler in sil".

So we decided to start work on it and get it back up to scratch.

I decided to pull back the filler on the sil and see how bad the rust beneath was.



Not too bad you think, OK it's received a scrape in the past so someone filled it. Not a problem!
Buzz back more of the rusty area where it's peeling;




BALLS!

[Bio]

What does one do in this situation?
START ANOTHER PART OF THE CAR INSTEAD!


Cleaned down and restored the door card.

And when young and naive and owning a V-Dub?




Spray the inside of the sil with Waxoyl, fill the hole with mesh and filler! (yeah I know).

1 month later we received notice we had to move house. The project went on hold and we moved house. Around the same time I bought the 'Lude

[Bio]

So here we are, 2 years later. The car has sat SORN and unmaintained the entire time.
We ummed and ahhed over getting rid and about 2 weeks ago the missus says "I think we should see how much it will take to get it back on the road!"

*sigh*

Battery flat as a pancake which was totally unsurprising so we pop down to Europarts as you do, and picked up a new one for £45.
Slung it in the car and attempted to start.

Turned over first goddamn time!
2 years with the same horrid old fuel in it, the same skanky oil and plugs, and air filter and coolant, and it turns over. Sure a little clackety for a second or so while oil pressure got up but it damn well started.

Shes a little lumpy but that's totally fine and expected after 2 years standing.


So this is her in the current form:



And the bad side that's had the bad paintwork since we bought it:


You can see my handiwork on the sill at this point. It's actually well formed and pretty smooth.


Engine bay

[Bio]

After starting it I decided to check that the rad pipes weren't bulging and that the thermostat was working. Everything felt OK but the pipes felt "crunchy", like there was piles of rust stuck in the corners sooooooooo.. Time to take the rad out!

Took a bit of effort what with everything pretty much ceased (actually removed in the shot above) but we got it out in the end;



Front subframe is a little.. rusty?


Slam panel corrosion up and underneath where the rad mounts have been rubbing badly for years;


More corrosion;


And this evening I flushed the rad.
What came out was pretty much just manky old coolant that's crystallized slightly due to age, the glycol seems to have settled out basically.
I've also had a scrape around inside the coolant pipes and they don't seem too bad. Soon I'll get the thermostat out of the engine and flush the entire thing through to get her clean on the inside.

Also whoever invented these hose clips is my nemesis;



I'll replace these with stainless jubilee clips when its all put back together.

More coming soon.

[jjmartin349571]

Love it mate, can't beat a retro VW and to be fair to the things they're tough as nails. My 8v golf has done roughly 200,000 miles and it still goes. I had to do the head gasket at one point, but that was only because those useless clips let go under pressure and all the coolant boiled it never stopped running though, and I fixed it for about £70 on my drive will be watching this with interest, I need to remove 21 years of dents from my VW!

[Sailor]

Also whoever invented these hose clips is my nemesis;


I'll replace these with stainless jubilee clips when its all put back together.

They're Spring Band clips and a great example of a manufacturer thinking only of production costs and ignoring service issues. They're cheaper than worm-drive hose clips and quicker to assemble if you have the correct tool (usually pneumatic). The Japs started using them first; European cars used to run higher coolant pressures and didn't adopt them for some time afterwards. You're right to replace them!

[Bio]

Ah right!
Glad I'm replacing them with something easier to work on

Done a bit more work on the Corrado over the last 2 days in between applying Bilt-Hamber Dynax UB inside my arches on the 'Lude to help prevent the rust monster from getting to it over the winter.
I also get to pick my wheels up tomorrow hopefully!

Last night we remove the headlamps and grille, but due to the autumn nights getting dark so soon we didn't get much else done!
The fogs were really seized in so I had to drill out all the screws too







This morning while I worked on the Prelude, the missus did some more to the Corrado working towards getting the bumper off;



Splitter/valance off.

The Corrado has an.. interesting way of holding the front together.
The actual bumper bar is bolted to the plastic bumper itself. To get this off you have to undo some rather large 17mm bolts from under the car that hold on the front engine mount brace and the bumper.
Needless to say these were seized on as they take the brunt of winter salted roads and rain.

We had to pop to machinemart and buy ourselves a shiny new breaker bar to get the leverage needed on the bolts, so we picked up a 1/2" socket set at the same time as I'd been wanting to step up from my smaller 1/4" drive set anyway.
£45 later we have a nice new set of sockets, a 24" breaker bar and a removed bumper

[Bio]

A quick look at the corrosion found under the bumper:




Doesn't look like great news, but if we want to replace anything or treat the rust we have to get the slam panel out so we did;



And what a treasure trove of purest rust we did find!





Fortunately most of it seems to be sound metal underneath, ideally we will replace the front cross member if we can find one in better nick, if not there will be a LOT of deox gel and knot wheel usage involved to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Also thinking of seeing if we can get an aftermarket PAS fluid cooler in there or something to replace it at least as it's looking pretty bad too.

[jjmartin349571]

The way the bumper is mounted on is mental isn't it, I never understood why they did this when I took my Golf apart. Without the bumper on the engine is really badly supported, you definitely wouldn't want to turn the engine over without the bumper brackets bolted in

Will be keeping an interested eye on this thread mate, I think you're going to be doing a lot of jobs that I need to do! I'm putting the front end of my Golf back together tomorrow, as I'm getting it ready for taxing and using again Need to do a lot of bodywork too though! Shame you're not closer or we could have an epic VW session